A multi-million pound campaign to boost Germans' low self-confidence has backfired after it emerged that its slogan was first coined by the Nazis.

The £20 million Du Bist Deutschland - You Are Germany - campaign was devised to inspire Germans to stop moaning and do something good for their country.
One of the 'You Are Germany' advertisements
One of the 'Du Bist Deutschland' advertisements

Beethoven, Einstein and the sports stars Franz Beckenbauer and Michael Schumacher have been cited in advertisements encouraging Germans to take more pride in their homeland.

But a historian from Ludwigshafen has provoked an uproar with his discovery that the same Du Bist Deutschland cry was used at Nazi rallies in the 1930s.

Stefan Mörz uncovered photographs of a 1935 Nazi convention in which soldiers display a banner reading, in gothic script, Denn Du Bist Deutschland (Because You Are Germany). The slogan was topped with the head of Adolf Hitler. Leading Nazis such as Hermann Göring and Joseph Goebbels attended the event.

"Every time I see the slogan Du Bist Deutschland I am reminded of this rather disturbing parallel with the past," said Mr Mörz, a historian and archivist.
Denn Du Bist Deutschland banner
'Denn Du Bist Deutschland' was used by the Nazis in the '30s

Researchers have now set to work to discover how widespread the slogan was, even if most agree it was not one of the Nazis' official mantras. Its intended effect then is believed to be similar to that of the modern version: "You have the potential to make this country great once again."

The backers of the modern campaign, the brainchild of several blue chip media companies, expressed shock at the discovery but quickly distanced themselves from the Third Reich connection.

Indeed, one of its aims is to release today's Germans from the collective guilt and depression they still feel about the Nazi era, they said.

The project's image has now been battered by that same legacy.

"We are not very happy," said Lars Christian Cords, the campaign's co-ordinator. "Our campaign stands for the values human dignity, democracy, respect of the individual and pluralism. Du Bist Deutschland is a message to everyone that every one of us has a responsibility for the well-being and future of Germany."

The campaign has been compared to the "I'm Backing Britain" campaign launched during the economic depression in the late 1960s.

Studies show that Germans are among the world's most pessimistic and unhappy nations. The gloom stems mainly from economic woes and chronically high unemployment.

Van Gogh painted a lot and his greatest pictures in France, but he is for everybody a great dutch painter, no one will contest it or will say that if he wasn't in France he would had paint maybe not so great paints (it's just an example)

Van Gogh painted a lot and his greatest pictures in France, but he is for everybody a great dutch painter, no one will contest it or will say that if he wasn't in France he would had paint maybe not so great paints (it's just an example)

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Did you read the history of that slogan? Somehow I doubt that Einstein would feel all warm and fuzzy being 'quoted' from an old Nazi campaign slogan. What part of this are you missing here PE?

In Germany nationalism/patriotism is equated often with being a Nazi.
This is crap, because I aint no fan of Hitler or genocide or torture
and other crimes that went down during the 1000 year Reich.

But these days even you demand more action from the peace loving Germans. This campaign emphasizes things that Americans would hardly
find nationalistic to begin with.

Once they force children to sing the National anthym in school and they build
camps for the resettlement of Turks then you might have reason to worry.

So why do you dislike the campaign ?

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It's not so much disliking as feeling that it is not addressing any of the problems. I'd be more encouraged to see a combination of 'doing it for yourself, for the good of the nation' and 'stepping up to our world duties.' I'm not in PR.

As an outsider, more importantly an outsider that cannot speak the language, what I see as Germany's core problems are nanny state and pacificism, the latter probably a result of post WWII.

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